FactSet Research Systems has reached the 900-employee threshold in Norwalk, where it is based — more people than General Electric has at its Fairfield headquarters — as the financial information company makes the biggest acquisition in its history in the form of Portware, a New York City-based company with technology to execute stock trades.

FactSet has increased its worldwide workforce to 7,400 people, up 11 percent from a year earlier. Much of the increase is the result of hiring college graduates trained in software engineering, with a FactSet executive describing on Tuesday the company’s growth as a “healthy mix” of new hires both in the United States and at offices overseas.

FactSet provides data and analytics to investment professionals, estimating its market share at between 3 percent and 5 percent, well behind Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters (which has a large office in Stamford); and also competing with the Standard & Poor’s Capital IQ services of McGraw Hill Financial (NYSE: MHFI). Just over 62,000 people at more than 3,000 organizations use FactSet’s financial data feeds, with the 3,200 new users FactSet brought on between June and August the highest ever for any single quarter.

“We see their results — they have clearly done well,” said David Craig, Thomson Reuters’ president of financial and risk, referencing FactSet while speaking last week at a Goldman Sachs conference. “Our old legacy products had lower retention on the buy side, so maybe they picked some of that up. ... There is a data revolution going on at the moment. People talk about 20,000 (financial technology) companies who are out there trying to disrupt the old incumbents. There is certainly a lot happening in data discovery, data mapping, data analytics.”

For its fourth fiscal quarter ending Aug. 31, FactSet revenue was $262 million, up 10 percent from a year earlier. FactSet (NYSE: FDS, Nasdaq: FDS) earned $62.2 million or $1.48 a diluted share on an adjusted basis, up 12 percent and 13 percent respectively. FactSet shares were down about 2 percent in Tuesday trading to $162.42, having entered the year trading just above $140.

It marked FactSet’s first full quarter under Phil Snow, who as of July replaced longtime CEO Philip Hadley. In FactSet’s first major strategic announcement under Snow, the company said Tuesday it is acquiring New York City-based Portware for $265 million. Portware operates a stock order execution management system for simple trades by asset managers, freeing up time for them to focus on more complex trades. In March, Portware reported 40 percent year-over-year growth driven by demand among traders of foreign exchanges, with the company’s clients managing $8.5 trillion in assets.

“Portware has had a tremendous amount of recent success in the marketplace, and this is really driven by significant shift in their strategy,” Snow said Tuesday during a conference call with investment analysts. “They have shifted toward creating really good analytics in automation, freeing up (traders) ... to spend their time in areas where they can have the most value.”

Portware‘s existing ownership group includes Long Ridge Equity Partners, a New York City firm whose managing partner, Jim Brown, is a former manager with the GE Equity investment arm of Fairfield-based General Electric. Long Ridge’s portfolio companies include Structured Portfolio Management based in Stamford.